Carol Dweck’s Growth & Fixed Mindset
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent,
As a guide from beyond.
The Guest House, By RUMI, as found in one of Adriene’s wonderful love letters.
Hello there, my friend! Welcome to the podcast Anxiety my friend, with me, Raquel Coelho.
Today I bring you 2 questions about mindset.
- Firstly, What kind of mindset do you have?
- Secondly, How do you compliment yourself and others?
Each of these questions can be turned into a long and powerful conversation with yourself or with loved ones. Let’s start with the first question: what kind of mindset do you have?
Is it a fixed or growth mindset? A little bit of both? What does that even mean? A fixed mindset is the belief that your intelligence, talents and abilities are set in stone, and are predetermined. And let’s not get fixed on labels, please. Mindset is more of a spectrum. I might have a growth mindset when it comes to preparing a podcast episode, because I love to learn as I write, record and edit. But I might have a fixed mindset when it comes to painting, and I end up never signing up for classes because I think I’m not a good painter. Like with so many things in life; it’s not EITHER this or THAT, but more often a bit of this and a bit of that, with a special twist that is unique to you!
Carol Dweck and her colleagues were curious about students’ attitudes to failure. How did learners react to failure? They noticed that some students rebounded while other students seemed devastated by even the smallest setbacks. After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Carol Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence.
When students believe that they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement. This is what it looks like to have a growth mindset. Instead of thinking I can’t do this!” Students would think “I cant do this… YET”.
When Carol Dweck and her colleagues examined people’s brains, they found that those with a fixed mindset showed higher activity when they were told that their answers to questions were right or wrong — they were keenly interested to know whether they had succeeded or failed. But they showed no interest when researchers offered them help to learn from their mistakes. They didn’t believe they could improve so they didn’t try.
People with a growth mindset are interested in change and in the challenge. Jacqueline Novogratz puts it nicely when she says, “Change involves risk, and risk, which is not the same as recklessness, requires courage.”
Do you think you have a fixed mindset? Don’t worry, you can change that! Life is an iterative process, neuroplasticity is real and there seems to be growing evidence of that. And as I said earlier, it is not a question of this or that, it is a question of practising what you want. The good news is that recent neuroscience shows that the brain is far more malleable than we used to think. This is especially good for the oldies like me who sometimes wonder “am I too old to try and learn this?”
How do you compliment yourself and others?
Watch your compliments for a week, make note of them, and analyse them. If you want to, share them with me too. Carol Dweck says that something as simple as wording can have a powerful impact on our ability to improve.
Considering that the brain is malleable, researchers noticed that teacher practice has a big impact on student mindset, and the feedback that teachers give their students can either encourage a child to choose a challenge and increase learning or look for an easy way out, and in doing so stay in the “fail proof not-stretched state”. This can be applied to parenting and the way we deal with each other in general.
A common praise for intelligence we hear is, “You’re so smart!” and research suggests that it can actually have a negative impact on student motivation and achievement. In a study with 5th graders, Dweck and Mueller divided the children into two groups and asked them to work on a puzzle task, the impossible task, which began with an easy task and then more and more challenging tasks were given. One group, after succeeding initially, was praised for their intelligence and ability. The other group, also after succeeding, was praised for their effort, rather than intelligence. When the initially easy task became harder, the groups reacted in very different ways. Students praised for intelligence preferred to continue working on the easier tasks, while students praised for effort chose to progress to more challenging tasks. Overall, praise for intelligence led to less persistence, less enjoyment, and worse performance than praise for effort. When students were praised for having high ability, they came to attribute their success to a fixed quality of themselves, while students praised for effort believed that their performance could improve.
Instead of hiding deficiencies and limitations, we can learn from them and overcome them. Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” Isn’t this a handy reminder now, in our second year of a pandemic, when all of us have been tugged and stretched in ways we had never expected?
In Mindset, Dweck writes: “The other thing exceptional people seem to have is a special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes.” I have been reading a lot of Stoic texts recently and find them medicinal. Carol Dweck’s approach is also stoic. She says, “in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.” I love this! Let’s face it, once this pandemic is over, we will have other dark challenges ahead. Ups and downs are part of a healthy life. Challenges with friends and health are part of the journey we are on, so instead of sitting and hoping that things get better and we’ll be happy when… let’s get stuck in with whatever tasks we have at hand, feel the pain, listen to its messages, and surf the waves of life. There is nothing about sugar coating and positive psychology, just acceptance and empowerment.
We can still learn from our mistakes. The legendary basketball coach John Wooden says that you’re not a failure until you start to assign blame. That’s when you stop learning from your mistakes — you deny them. So if instead of assigning blame and running back into our comfort zone, we stretch our limits. Think of Vygotsky’s term — zone of proximal development — that zone, that area where you are uncomfortable but still know what is going on, and stretch with helping hands of others when you need them. Jacqueline says “just start — and let the work teach you. (…) Try. Fail. Try again.”
Here are some examples of fixed mindset compliments (that focus on the person or the result) and how to turn them into growth mindset compliments (which focus on the process and effort).
Resources
- Jacqueline Novogratz’s book & online course ‘Manifesto for a moral revolution’ https://acumen.org/moralrevolution/
- https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve
- https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/
